The incidents described in this book include the 1890 assassination of the New Orleans Chief of Police David Hennessey, the resulting Italian lynchings, and the 1906 murder of the seven-year-old child Walter Lamana. The first two incidents were the impetus for the 1999 HBO movie "Vendetta" and the book The Crescent City Lynchings by Tom Smith. The third incident had the most impact on many of the families documented in this book. The Walter Lamana child-killing story has not resurfaced for over a hundred years, until now.
The high profile crimes of the late 1800s and early 1900s typically do not mention the places of origin of the families involved. The majority of those involved came from a small town in Sicily named Chiusa Sclafani, which is near Corleone, situated in the province of Palermo. Chiusa Sclafani is not mentioned in the movie Vendetta, nor the books covering the incidents and families involved.
Fifteen years and roughly 60,000 hours of research are included in this book. This is one of most uniquely written books seen in centuries, and embodies a far-reaching and massive amount of documentation.
For the most part this book is a reference material. Included are details of ancestor voyages, accounts of major incidents, the impacts those incidents had on these families, and more. There are steamer ship voyages documented for 27 families and for 795 individuals. There are 32 family trees presented. The Index includes 731 unique surnames and 2948 individuals documented in the family trees presented.
The early chapters of this book describe the experience of the voyage and American citizenship process for our Sicilian immigrant ancestors, the "incidents" which occurred in New Orleans which caused the massive family dispersions, as well as a short description of Chiusa Sclafani and New Orleans.
The middle chapters contain the steamer ship voyages for many of those who left the island of Sicily and entered America. This is the main artery of this book, which connects the present to the past and vice-versa. This chapter will help many people in their research by "jumping the ocean", a peculiar and meaningful genealogy term.
The latter chapters of this book include the family descendant trees, which span from the earliest ancestors researched in Sicily, to the present. The first page (sometimes more than one page) of most of the family chapters includes a short dialogue explaining the family's entrance to America, detailing who migrated from Sicily to America, migrations from New Orleans to other places, many surname spelling changes, and more.
Because the original research focused on the author's own family, the Palisi family documentation includes 400 years and 12 complete generations. Further, the Palisi chapter contains a heraldry entry found in a document dated from the 1500s, placenames around the globe where the name Palisi is used, and genetic DNA testing results of the Palisi line. Frank Palisi chose to include his own family's genetic DNA testing and results in this book since he was inspired by National Geographic's (and their partner IBM) efforts to genetically test the DNA of a sampling of the world's population to determine how the earth was repopulated after the last Ice Age.
As a result of this book, first, second, and third cousins can now find out who and where their relatives are, after being separated over a hundred years ago.
This book has attracted and will continue to attract historians, genealogists, mafia enthusiasts, university professors & students, and more!
